A Day of Reckoning

There is no accounting for taste as the old lady said when she kissed her cow.

Today I set out to get my financial records sorted out from well before we left for Canada and tally up what it costs to go visit my kids. Accounting is not my idea of a good time. Visiting my kids is.

Airfare (Turkish Air and WestJet) was $2550 in total for the two of us . Dnipropetrovsk Regina return, including three nights in a great little hotel in Istanbul. It would have been even cheaper if I had not had to shuffle the WestJet tickets twice. Trying to match seat sales on two airlines is tricky.

In Canada we spent about $5000. $500 went on gasoline for May-B's car as we put 5200 km on it in two weeks (Thank you, my wonderful daughter). My mobile phone cost me about $200 for the month. Prepaid is NOT cheap. We only had one motel bill, thanks to strategically scattered kids and other relatives. Eating in restaurants is not cheap either and though we sponged as many meals as possible, we still took people out to dine and also ate while on the road. Teenburgers at 2 for $6.00 helped to satisfy my craving for North American food.

Clothing, for Tanya, for me but mostly for the family back in Ukraine. A winter coat for Masha and so forth. And stuff for the house like good quality bedding and bathroom accessories which we could never find in Ukraine - until after we buy it in Canada and ship it home. Then we can find it on the local shops. Go figure.

We went to Canada with three suitcases and returned home with four plus two boxes to ship, though to be fair the boxes are mostly stuff of mine that was in storage at May-B's. I still have 6 boxes of books at her place that need to be sorted. But we eliminated a number of boxes of souvenirs collected over the years from all over the world for which she was thankful.